Vision-Based Target Three-Dimensional Geolocation Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Lele Zhang, Fang Deng*, Jie Chen, Yingcai Bi, Swee King Phang, Xudong Chen, Ben M. Chen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

46 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This paper develops a method of calculating the three-dimensional (3-D) coordinates of a target with image information taken from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Unlike the usual approaches to target geolocation that rely heavily on georeferenced terrain database or accurate attitude sensors, the contribution of the proposed method is to offset the constraints and also perform 3-D geolocation of the target based on the relative altitude between the aircraft and the target calculated using the stereo vision technique. Considering the poor performance of the yaw-angle measurement provided by the low-quality attitude sensors in the UAV, a novel vision-based 3-D geolocation method is designed. The proposed method is proven to be valid and practical via simulation results and actual flight experiments.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)8052-8061
Number of pages10
JournalIEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics
Volume65
Issue number10
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2018

Keywords

  • Altitude estimation
  • computer vision
  • target 3-D geolocation
  • unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)

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